SHE'S SAYING, EYES peeking out briefly from beneath a long curtain of wavy blonde hair. "What if some of them can't make it? There are train strikes. How are people going to get here? What if I'm performing to an empty room?"
It's November 2022, and we're backstage four hours before she's due to play a sold-out headline show at Camden's recently renovated KOKO. Excited teenage girls have been queuing outside the venue since 9am, despite slashing rain and bone-chilling winds. At one point, Woods tells me, she was worried about them getting sick, so she got someone to distribute hats and gloves and hot buckets of KFC. Of course they'll come, I say - they're already here, aren't they? People have bought tickets. But Woods just stares ahead blankly, my reassurances sliding off her like sheets of ice. "It's been quite an overwhelming day," she says after a while, pulling at the sleeves of her baggy knitted Kickers jumper. "I'm just terrified about tonight."
Despite the sudden pre-show nerves, the 23-year-old musician has largely become known for her bold and audacious, shit-kicking energy. She writes emotive pop-rock songs about deserving more from annoying boys or being heartbroken and unapologetic about it (think Olivia Rodrigo and Halsey, via Suffolk, where Woods is from). In one of her bigger tracks, 'You're Not Harry Styles', she sings: "Running around with your God complex / Do you picture yourself while we're having sex together?" There's an open-heartedness to DYLAN's personality, lyrics and sound. Whether she's freaking out about playing to an empty room, or lamenting the loss of yet another fuckboi, she appears to approach everything heart first - a young star not yet apathetic, or too strung out from back-to-back tours.
This story is from the February/March 2023 edition of Rolling Stone UK.
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This story is from the February/March 2023 edition of Rolling Stone UK.
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